U.S. Government Wants June Passenger Records

danwiz was one of several readers to point out the Associated Press story (carried here by the Boston Globe) which says that that the Transportation Security Administration plans to issue an emergency order requiring that U.S. airlines turn over passenger data for all June 2004 flights to the government within 40 days. "Such data may include credit card numbers, address, telephone number and meal request. Perhaps unrelated to terrorism, the data will be also tested to see if fraud or identity theft can be detected."

Comments

Re:What's a little profiling among friends?

[CaptainZapp]

What is so bad about the idea of establishing criteria for high risk passengers?

Simple, that the true baddies will avoid to fall into this profile. Since more attention is directed towards those folks of which the computer believes fall into the category of baddies, less attention is dialed out to those that don't fall into this category and this will be exploited.

Read about the Carnival Booth Algorithm for more information.

Re:What's a little profiling among friends?

[DLR]

I'll spare you the obvious Benjamin Franklin quote. If our government hadn't been so busy grabbing all our guns the passengers on the hijacked flights on September 11th would have been able to defend themselves (see note below). Terrorists (and other criminals) are always trying to avoid security (DuH!), but if the majority of citizens provide their own security then, and only then, are security precautions unavoidable for the want-to-be perpetrator. No government, be it Federal, State, or Local, has the manpower or other resources to provide for each citizen's personal or family security 24x7. You, and you alone, are responsible for that. Note: Yes, I subscribed to an armed citizenry, but I'm not stupid either. I am aware that for "safe" gun usage on an aircraft that citizens would have to have alternative loads such as plastic bullets. The fact remains that unprepared passengers stopped the terrorists on one flight, and had the passengers on the other flights known there soon to be fate they too could have saved thousands of other lives, possibly even including their own.